Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Two years ago

I was just reminded of a post I wrote two years ago right after Hamas' election victory, called Why Hamas Won, from a thread at Jihad Watch. It was a bit optimistic towards the immediate future but I believe that the reasons I gave still hold true. (Later that week I wrote a much more pessimistic scenario.)

As I looked at that old post I saw other posts I wrote that week that stand up quite well after two years. So, for those interested, here are some oldies, all from the week after Hamas won their election:

The cult of the "Peace Process" - why the "Peace Process" has nothing to do with peace
The Arafatization of Hamas - on a Hamas op-ed in Newsweek
The Democracy Pandora's Box - The prerequisite for democracy is freedom
The Arafatization of Hamas II - comparing Hamas Arabic statements with the PLO in 1974
Your crazy Uncle Ned - how the West treats nutty Islamists
The Arafatization of Hamas III - on a Hamas op-ed in the Washington Post
Poor Hamas schizophrenics - comparing "moderate" statements of Hamas to their charter

"Happy Together" - latest EoZ video

Enjoy:

Palestinian Arab press roundup 1-24-09

Fatah supporters are reporting that Hamas has set up detention and torture centers in mosques and kindergartens. One mosque was mentioned specifically, Imam El-Shafei, and the kindergarten was called al-Tahir in Beit Hanoun. Hamas also continues to attack Fatah members, blowing a wall in the house of one and shooting the legs of two brothers.

One Fatah member was tortured to death last week. The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 38.

There are reports that Hamas is asking Egypt to arrange an 18-month truce with Israel. Which is exactly what one would expect terrorists to do if they won a war, right?

Hamas is supposedly going to appoint Khalil Al-Hayya as the "Interior Minister" to replace the dear, departed Said Siam. This scoop came courtesy of the Iranian media, who must have some really good investigative reporters - or friends in Hamas. Remember how pundits claim that Sunnis and Shiites hate each other so much that they would never cooperate? Brilliant analysis, as usual.

PalPress reports of another case of Hamas confiscating aid to Gaza and distributing it to their own sympathizers.

PalPress also reprints an Israeli report about a soldier who says that the IDF were very close to the Shifa hospital where the Hamas leaders were holed up but they didn't go in; also that he saw how Hamas hid behind the women and children while shooting from mosques and schools. One commenter, who claims to be from Gaza, agreed:

With great regret that I am one of the Gaza Strip who have lived a war from beginning to end and talk with regret that the Zionist true

Hamas has taken the peaceful citizens and children as human shields and were firing rockets from among them and escape and hide among children and also the launch of rockets from crowded places and people's enthusiasm was in line with Israel to kill the largest possible number of people of Palestine in Gaza

Suffice God yes agent

I don't know how to translate that last phrase but I often see it in the context of sadness at tragedy, making this comment seem more likely to be legitimate.

Richard Falk lies again

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Richard Falk, who has repeatedly compared Israeli actions in Gaza to Nazi Germany, has been saying that Hamas has repeatedly offered a truce extension to Israel that Israel spurned. His latest claim was made at a symposium at UCLA on "Human Rights and Gaza" (that curiously completely ignored Hamas' own violations of Gazan's human rights:)

Hamas, he pointed out, consistently urged the continuation of its July 2008 Egypt-sponsored ceasefire with Israel and even its extension for up to 10 years. According to the respected British newsweekly, The Economist, Falk noted, Hamas proposed an extension of up to 20 years. “What is so revealing is the Israeli refusal to even acknowledge that this was a diplomatic initiative that would have probably ended any violence.”

I already showed that Falk is, quite simply, a liar. At that time, I wasn't aware of any specific Hamas truce offer that he was referring to, so I couldn't prove that he was lying on that specific point, but this repetition over here spurred me to research this supposed truce extension.

I could not find any mention of this in The Economist (although I did find an article that called Falk's obscene comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany "absurd.") But I did find some articles about Hamas' offer of a twenty year truce, and as I thought, it was not an "extension" of the existing six month calm period that Falk claims. It was a fake offer that Hamas had made years ago whose terms were that after Israel withdraws completely from all lands captured in 1967, then Hamas would offer a ten or twenty year truce without recognizing Israel's existence.

Falk explicitly calls this a "continuation of its July 2008 Egypt-sponsored ceasefire" and he knows very well that it was nothing of the sort. And when Hamas was given the chance to continue the truce, it rejected it.

Falk knows this - and he lies anyway.

Normally, if a moonbat professor wants to lie like this, it is no big deal, because there is no shortage of people with letters after their names willing to lie for their pet political causes. Falk, however, has the gravitas of being a UN representative and as a result his speeches get coverage. And his speeches are consistently oriented towards demonizing Israel for doing things that are often, as we see, fiction.

Falk has no credibility and it is way past time for him to be called to the carpet for his consistent, sickening and verifiable lies.

PalToday "finds" the missing "IDF fatalities"

Hamas and the other terror gangs have been claiming that they killed scores of IDF soldiers; the latest number I saw was 48 although I have seen higher claims as well.

The problem, of course, is how can an open society cover up so many deaths? How could Israel cover up the funerals and the publicity that would come with all those dead soldiers?

The Islamic Jihad-oriented Palestine Today figured it out!

An intrepid PalToday journalist saw a news story that 13 Israelis have been killed in traffic accidents this month, and many others critically injured. Obviously, these deaths were really soldiers who were killed by the brave mujahadeen, and Israel only pretended that they were killed in traffic accidents in order to boost the morale of their soldiers.

Because we all know that Israeli drivers are incredibly careful and never get into accidents.

This only explains less than half of the supposed IDF losses, so we can be sure that more equally compelling theories will be forthcoming. I mean, if Hamas said they killed so many soldiers, it must be true.

Egypt claims that Hamas weapons come from Israel

From Firas Press:

Ambassador Mukhlis Qutb, the Secretary-General of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights, says that Egypt has documents and evidence and confessions that the arms of the Palestinians within the occupied territories come mostly from individuals who hold Israeli citizenship, and that all sales, procurement and trade occurs in secret places inside Israel, in addition to the sale and smuggling of weapons stores by some of the members of the occupying forces.

He said that Egypt had not allowed under any circumstance to use its border for arms smuggling, and rejected U.S. and Israeli attempts to sign security agreements for electronic or human surveillance close to its borders, because that does not conform with the requirements of Arab national security and Egypt.

Obviously, Chinese and Iranian Grad rockets must come from Israeli weapons collectors who bring them back on their commercial flights from their vacations in the Far East.

How could we even consider that the hundreds of Rafah tunnels would be used for anything besides candy and cows?

Has the UN ever accused Hamas of "war crimes"?

The UN has been busy accusing Israel of "war crimes."

Yesterday, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, said "I believe that there is the prima facie case" that Israel committed "systematic war crimes" in Gaza, and defined every one of Gaza's 1.5 million residents as casualties because of their "psychological trauma. " He made this determination from his home in California.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for a probe into alleged Israeli "war crimes," and the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza has also said he was "concerned" about possible war crimes. Today, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs is expected to give a press conference about his concerns as well. Earlier, the UN Human Rights Council voted to investigate "grave human rights violations" done by Israel.

This is a lot of energy and time that the UN is using to accuse one side of war crimes and human rights obligations. By any objective measure, however, Hamas' war crimes are much more obvious, widespread and numerous than the worst that UN officials incessantly accuse Israel of.

Here is a list of war crimes and grave violations of humanitarian law that are not only well known but many of which Hamas openly admits to and brags about:

Deliberately targeting civilians
Attacking from within civilian areas and civilian structures, including hospitals and mosques
Using humanitarian symbols for attacks, such as by transporting terrorists in ambulances
Direct and public incitement to genocide
The systematic attacks against civilians upgrades that war crime into a crime against humanity
The recruitment of children into the conflict
Firing at the enemy while wearing civilian clothes
Wearing the uniforms of the enemy
Shooting rockets with phosphorus payloads deliberately at civilians
Not adhering to international standards on the treatment of prisoners of war
Immediate execution of alleged "collaborators" without a trial
Deliberately placing military targets, such as weapons caches and rocket launchers, among civilians

The worst I could find that the UN has said about Hamas was that rocket attacks against civilian targets are "unlawful." Usually the word "Hamas" is barely mentioned in these statements. No, the rocket attacks against civilians are "unlawful," sort of like jaywalking, and they happen by themselves being mentioned in a passive voice.

When will we be seeing the UN accusing Hamas of the obvious war crimes they have committed? When will we see UN officials call numerous press conferences that accuse Palestinian Arab groups of war crimes without mentioning Israel? When will we see committees set up for the purpose of investigating exposing Arab terror alone?

Only when the UN does so can we possibly entertain the idea that the UN is an honest, evenhanded organization that is truly concerned with violations of war crimes. Not by them mentioning as an aside that Hamas also does some not-so-nice things which do not justify Israel's actions, but when they focus on the many Arab terrorist war crimes exclusively as they have focused on Israel.

As it is, the UN in this context is simply a hate organization with a single-minded goal on vilifying the Jewish state alone.

"No Hamas tunnels here!" "What about that one?"

From Newsweek:

Najah Abd Rabo shook her head and said Israeli actions were beyond comprehension. "They were claiming there are tunnels under here," she said. "There aren't any tunnels around here, we are not resistance," she said. Yet not more than 20 feet away from Najah, there was just such a tunnel, which Israeli troops had unearthed. Right in the middle of the road, it had a convincingly camouflaged roof that matched the rest of the road. Inside it was shored up with timbers and concrete.

A case of "eyewitness" lying, or a case of Hamas knowingly putting civilians at risk?

Probably both. It is hard to be completely ignorant of "civilians" popping up out of the street in front of your home.

How many dead in Gaza? Hard to say.

An Italian reporter is claiming that there were no more than 500-600 deaths, total, in Gaza: (h/t Backspin)

The number of Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead did not exceed five or six hundred, Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent for Italy's Corriere della sera reported on Thursday.
Cremonesi based his report on tours of hospitals in the Gaza Strip and on interviews with families of casualties. He also assessed the number of wounded to be far lower than 5,000, the number quoted by Hamas and repeated by the UN and the Red Cross in Gaza.
"It is sufficient to visit several hospitals [in the Gaza Strip] to understand that the numbers don't add up," he wrote.
In the European hospital in Rafah, one of the facilities which would presumably be filled with wounded from the "war of the tunnels," many beds were empty, according to Cremonesi. A similar situation was noted in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and in the privately-run Amal Hospital Cremonesi reported that only five out 150 beds were occupied.
Cremonesi interviewed Gazans who echoed Israel's insistence of how Hamas gunmen used civilians as human shields. One Gazan recalled civilians in Gaza shouting at Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, "Go away, go away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill us all? Do you want our children to die under their bombs? Take your guns and missiles with you."
"Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?" the religious fanatics of Hamas reportedly responded.
Other Palestinians told Cremonesi of Hamas operatives donning paramedic uniforms and commandeering ambulances. A woman identified as Um Abdullah, 48, spoke of Hamas using UN buildings as launch pads for rockets.
Cremonesi reported that he had difficultly gathering evidence as the local population was terrified of Hamas.

YNet reports this a bit more cautiously:

Despite the claims, the IDF stood behind its estimate that between 1,100 to 1,200 people were killed in the Strip during the fighting, more than two-thirds of them Hamas members.

The army initially believed that the number of civilian casualties was higher, as many Hamas men walked outside their houses dressed in civilian clothes, leaving their weapons at home.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, who is in change of the emergency department at the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, denied the figures presented by the Italian paper.

Hassanain told Ynet that the Palestinian figures were issued cautiously, without any political considerations, and that several casualties may not have been reported as their bodies are still under the rubble or have not been handed over to the rescue forces and authorized medical officials.

A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."

The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"

These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. "Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men," the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper.

These new figures must be treated with caution especially in light of the fact that various official sources in the Gaza Strip, including United Nations and Red Cross officials, have reported that more than 1,300 people were killed and some 5,000 wounded during the three weeks of fighting in the coastal strip. Palestinian sources claim that three-quarters of the dead were unarmed civilians.

I have no doubts about the anecdotes, but it is very hard to know how many were killed, and Cremonesi's methods of counting do not seem too rigorous.

The PCHR makes a point of listing the names of the dead when it can, and they count 1284 dead. (The site is unavailable at the moment.) I don't think that they are lying about the total, but they do count civilians in ways that I would not agree with. For example, they count Hamas leaders Said Siam and Nizar Rayan as civilians.

They also count the Hamas police as civilians.

Here are some raw numbers of claims from the Gaza side of militants/terrorists killed during the operation:

Hamas - 48 (an absurdly low number)

Gaza "civil defense" - 11

Islamic Jihad - 39

Gaza "police force" - 230

Fatah's Al-Mujahideen Brigades - 5

Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades -3

PRC - unknown, at least 3 I know of

DFLP - 13

PFLP - unknown, at least 1 I know of

Fatah members killed by Hamas - at least 16

All terror groups according to PCHR: 223 (not including the Gaza police, civil defense, infighting, public Hamas figures)

The PCHR certainly doe not distinguish between Gaza civilians killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas, in "friendly fire" or misfires.

I don't have a solid idea of the real numbers, so this is just to throw some data out there.

News briefs

A liberal Arab wrote an op-ed describing how Hamas' ideology results in their disregard of the value of human life. He sarcastically stated "This is a wonderful ideal to say that the steadfastness of the resistance or simply the survival of their leaders underground or in exile, or simply the survival of the ideology, is in itself a victory or a defeat for the enemy!"

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about a joint Jewish-Muslim women's group in France, where they get together once a month to make and eat baklava. The secret to their success? They don't allow political discussions.

The Arab Times of Kuwait has a truly nonsensical op-ed, where the author pretty much calls all Arabs collaborators with Israel, including the late Yasir Arafat and the later Saddam Hussein. He ends up by saying:

The bitter fact which Israel - the entity which has stolen our land – is aware of is that a day will come when the stones and the trees will begin to speak: ‘There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’ Only then the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be liberated just like it was liberated by Salah-ud-Din, whose origin was Kurdish not Arab, because the Arabs of today are conspirators hiding behind the logo of a ‘Comprehensive and Just Peace.’

I personally can't wait for that day when the stones and trees speak; I'll take a video and make a fortune!

Fatah is calling for mass demonstrations in Gaza today. Hamas is saying that the rally is illegal and that Fatah is trying to cause political problems. Things might get interesting in Gaza.

Palestine Today is quoting a UNRWA spokesman (not the one that I have been corresponding with) as denying that any aid trucks were hijacked. He admits there was one "incident" but seems to say it was all a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, Arutz-7 has more details.

Why the West cannot stop smuggling tunnels

The UAE National newspaper has an illuminating article about the Rafah tunnels, and it is pretty clear that no amount of "memoranda" will be able to stop them from being built.

And the reason is because Egypt will not crack down on them.

After weeks of bombing and despite high-level meetings and diplomatic speeches pledging to end the smuggling of goods and weapons from Egypt to this Palestinian enclave, reconstruction of what the workers here estimate are 1,000 tunnels has continued unabated for the three days since Israel and Hamas ceased firing.

“Israel will never succeed. I will make it 25 metres deep” to avoid the Israeli bombs that destroyed this narrow corridor during the three-week assault, said Abu Haysem, one of the Rafah tunnel owners. Abu Haysem said he built his tunnel out of the basement of his home, which lays, speckled with shrapnel, about 320 metres from, and 14 metres under, the Egypt-Gaza border.

“If Egypt decides to stop the tunnels from working, they can. They can block the roads to Rafah and arrest the tunnel owners,” said Abu Haysem. “Egypt says they will stop the tunnels but they don’t because they want the money.”

That money – 50 per cent of Abu Haysem’s lucrative trade – is used to pay his partners across the border and funds their graft scheme with Egyptian officials.

The sentiment on the ground remains one of scepticism that serious steps would be taken to halt the smuggling. Indeed, most of the tunnelling along the border is done in the open, within sight of Egyptian border posts.

Other than by bribing officials, some tunnel owners claim their tunnels will remain open thanks to Egyptian solidarity with the Palestinians, after Egypt faced the opprobrium of several Arab countries for keeping their part of the Gaza border sealed. That sympathy, said Akram Hamad, a tunnel worker, is partly derived from a common understanding between Egyptians and Gazans: that the Rafah tunnels no longer traffic in weapons. “The Egyptian side has sympathy with us when it comes to food, but when it comes to weapons they are very strict,” said Mr Hamad.

The Egyptians tied to the tunnels apparently do very little actual work building them, but assume the bulk of the legal risk and responsibility for bribing Egyptian authorities to get materials through them.

I tend to believe that most Rafah tunnel diggers are reluctant to smuggle arms nowadays, but the author doesn't consider that Hamas has its own tunnels exclusively for weapons and explosives whose owners are much less likely to grant interviews. Indeed, Hamas has more money for bribes from taxing the goods from the "consumer tunnels," and Egypt regularly finds caches of explosives and arms in the Sinai meant for Gaza. (It is entirely possible that Hamas has built tunnels south of Rafah, as well.)

At any rate, the idea that the tunnels could be closed without full Egyptian cooperation is a non-starter. Money tends to make people a bit less interested in adhering to agreements.

Qaddafi's single state solution in the NYT

Libya's nutty leader Muammar Qaddafi writes an op-ed in the New York Times pushing for a single-state solution, "Isratine." It is certainly ghostwritten by someone who understands the Western mindset - it pushes all the right buttons for well-meaning but uninformed people to warm to the idea of a painless way to destroy Israel. It appears, in fact, to be written with a liberal Jewish audience in mind.

To that end, he adds an interesting paragraph:

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.”

Will their be a furious Arab reaction that Qaddafi challenges the entire Palestinian Arab narrative? Or will they stay quiet, knowing that the "Israetine" that Qaddafi is pushing would very quickly turn into Palestine?

Great moments in autotranslation

This is tasteless, but I'm a weak person.

The autotranslation of an article in the Islamic Jihad mouthpiece Palestine Today talks about the alleged ruthless destruction of an entire village by the heartless Zionist army.

It is called the village of Dik Hole:

Destroyed most of their homes and farms and other land
The Israeli army removed the village, "Dik hole" on the map of the Gaza Strip

Words can not describe what you can watch the destruction and devastation and disaster in the Gaza Strip has been the result of the Israeli aggression which targeted over 23 days. But the case of the village, "Dik hole", which is located south-east of Gaza City, completely different, because there is no longer in the village of origin to talk about.

The article continues, including fantastic details like the IDF executing cows of the doomed village of Dik Hole.

There are too many jokes I can make, all of them really inappropriate. I don't doubt that my readers will come up with some, though.

Why is Israel's Gaza medical clinic empty?

JPost reports:

Medics at Israel's newly inaugurated border clinic expressed their frustration Tuesday at the lack of patients from Gaza coming to the facility, which is situated on the Strip's northern border, and was officially opened Sunday.

"I spent the whole day there [Monday] and not one person came to us for help," said one doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous. "The people there are scared, scared of us and scared of Hamas."

A spokesman for Magen David Adom (MDA), which is operating the clinic in cooperation with the Welfare and Social Services Ministry and the Health Ministry said that so far only seven Palestinian children with cancer had arrived at the center for treatment. All had been released, he said.

Situated at the Erez terminal, the clinic is a humanitarian gesture by Israel following the 22-day operation in Gaza. Speaking at its inauguration on Sunday, government officials said that the clinic would accept all patients and that the more serious cases would be referred to Israeli hospitals.

Set up to treat about 50 patients, the clinic is designed to help Palestinians who are either wounded or ill, said Levy.

A mobile intensive care unit and four regular ambulances have been stationed at the Erez clinic by MDA.

The facility is staffed with emergency specialists, pediatricians, family physicians, gynecologists/obstetricians, trauma experts, surgeons, orthopedists, ophthalmologists, otolaryngologists and other experts.

Tony Laurance, acting head of the World Health Organization's office in Gaza and the West Bank, told The Jerusalem Post earlier this week that he doubted that Palestinians would be allowed by their leaders to access the clinic.

Why are Gazans not coming to the clinic? One would think that with thousands of injured civilians, including women and children, people would want to have the best care possible. No one would have any doubt that the Israeli doctors would do an excellent job and would have higher medical standards than those in Gaza. So why is it a failure so far?

The major reason is clearly Hamas. As the WHO official said, Hamas leaders would simply not allow Gazans to be treated there. A little thought would show why.

First of all, Hamas engineered the entire battle to maximize the number of Gazans who would die or be injured. Every day there are new deaths from injuries suffered during the fighting, and each time the number of dead tick up, Hamas has a new propaganda victory. It is not cynical to notice that Hamas values PR more than human lives; it is merely recognizing the cynicism of the terrorists.

The second reason is the flip-side of the first: Hamas does not want any news media to report that Israelis are selflessly treating Gazans. The contrast with the selfishness of Hamas, where they confiscated medical aid to treat terrorists at the expense of Gaza civilians, would not be flattering. Hamas needs to be looked upon as caring more about civilians than Israel is, and will go to any lengths to ensure that Israel does not appear humane.

Thirdly, there are more terrorists injured than Hamas is willing to admit, and they cannot go to Israel to risk capture.

The fourth reason is more insidious. Hamas has now enlisted an army of doctors who are willing to testify - really lie - about alleged Israeli use of white phosphorus, depleted uranium and DIME weapons. These doctors are happy to do so in order to be part of Hamas' jihad against Israel (or, in the case of the European doctors, to simply demonize Israel.)

Israeli doctors treating the same patients would see that these doctors are lying, and would have the physical proof.

A related thought is behind the fifth reason Hamas would never allow Israeli doctors to treat Gazans: because a percentage of Gazan civilian injuries are the direct result of Hamas and its allies' rockets, mortars and guns, as well as secondary explosions. We will never know how many of the innocent civilians who died or were injured were hurt from Hamas fire, but it is reasonable to assume that the numbers are significant.

There were reports from Israel that the tragic death of three daughters and a niece of a Palestinian doctor came not from Israel but from a Grad rocket, as determined by shrapnel removed by Israeli doctors who treated them.

We know that a percentage of mortars and Grad rockets fall short, and we know that these have sometimes fatal results. Shooting rockets hurriedly would increase the number of misfires. There was also at least one IDF video of the bombing of a weapons depot where a rocket shot out of the targeted area and flew a few hundred feet before landing.

In addition, there were some firefights in Gaza between the IDF and various groups, and one would not expect the terror groups to be as careful as the IDF in where they were firing.

How many civilians were killed by Hamas, or by secondary explosions of Hamas ordnance? We will never know. Most of the evidence is buried. But we can be sure that the number is higher than zero, and that Hamas will do everything necessary - including forcing Gazans to forego quality medical care - to ensure that this information never sees the light of day.